You can't Escape the Light of the Moon
by HoldingontoStilesHale
Summary: Something dark is lurking in Beacon Hills, and somehow Stiles is entangled with its sinister design. How deep his connection runs, and how tight the evil clutches him...that is the question he doesn't want to ask. But the answer will find him before he finds it. When Derek comes back to town, well, it doesn't seem like a coincidence.


**PART 1**

"From the first day we met

I've warned you of myself  
and how I would bring you  
nothing but pain and tears.

I told you of the poisons  
that ran through my veins  
and the venom that ejects  
from the curve of my lips."

— "You Stayed"  
Written by: Paige Howard

HE FEELS IT, the way he feels the pulsating in his fingers, in the way he becomes conscious of his tongue in his mouth when he realizes it's there, in that he's here and not really, and so Stiles knows that he is dying. He's being torn apart, disintegrating into this scared and miserable vessel, and he never even suspects it.

"He's got the whole smoldering thing going on. It actually exists," Lydia's voice rings out with a note of awe, slightly interrupting his reading. "The trifecta of tall, dark and brooding. I might have to get myself a tall glass of that."

"Well, technically, you can't use that since he's sitting down, and can't confirm that he is in fact tall." Allison pipes up from her seat next to Lydia, and goes on to add in the same wonder tone, "But he is gorgeous. And I mean gorgeous."

Stiles is partially listening to the ogling-fest the girls have going on in front of him. In the last ten minutes he's only heard of this 'sex god,' and 'sex-on-two-legs' and that they'd definitely do him. Sideways. He surreptitiously casts a look at the tables around him to see if the other patrons are catching wind of the dissertation of the 'bad boy, for sure.'

Because, yes, Scott is the verified sonnet maestro, but it seems like the girls are making a run for the title. And, yes, Stiles is extremely intrigued, because curious is his middle name. That is after troublemaker, but for once he is tramping on that urge, or more like squashing himself on the chair as to not whip around.

He might be legally considered an adult, but he still has his awkward oddities, which he likes to term as "quirks." So, if the smoldering dude hasn't heard the moonstruck fangirls with hearts in their eyes seated in front of him—which were evidently exchanged in place of his once poised and levelheaded best friends—then his wrenching neck would assuredly get his attention. Without a shadow of a doubt, he'd flail around in his twisting and end up splayed on the wooden floor.

Opting to immerse himself in the assigned literature readings sounds like the best option, both for his state of mind and dignity. A first for Stiles, who didn't differentiate. Hot was hot, be that it was a girl or a guy. Therefore, if this guy was the hottest guy on the planet and he didn't turn around, then all the better. Ignorance was truly bliss in his case. If not he'd find himself fixated on going to the cafe at any and every given chance. Hoping to catch a glimpse from whoever that guy was, looking for the best available corner to see and be seen, waiting for the perfect moment to pass by his table. And if he happened to strike up a conversation, Stiles would act unawares. Maybe years from then he'd casually mention he'd be stalking the guy, but he was getting a bit of himself, proving his point.

Not that he didn't already. Spent most of his free time at the cafe, that is. He had first used it to pass some time between his Tuesday and Thursday classes, since he had a major lapse intermediating his literature class and the criminal justice one. Devoting the time and space on catching up on any homework or reading he hadn't managed to cram in the night before.

After that he used it for a collection of things: all nighters, coffee fix, book fix, cupcake fix, death-by-chocolate fix. It was the new hang out den for Stiles and his friends. Where one went, the rest collectively followed.

"He's probably gay, or maybe bi," Lydia's voice cuts through again, her head tilted, regarding the TDB guy.

"That's offensive,"

Lydia spears him with a glance, narrowing her eyes at him until he went back to reading. "How is that offensive? Being gay or bi isn't offensive." One polished eyebrow rose, sleekly. Daring him, or, in Lydia's case challenging him.

"Stereotyping is." He points out, emphasizing it with the thumb he had been gnawing on moments prior.

Lydia's response is a mere flick of her hair. Stiles shoots a cursory glance across the span of the cafe, and then goes to retrieve his phone from the heaps of notes dispersed on his side of the table. Everyone knows he's a rampant state of being, taking all the space around him.

"Then, how about you turn around and judge for yourself. I'll bet you'll be wishing this one has an iota of gay in him."

Allison who has been silent through the whole exchange between Stiles and Lydia, finally speaks up. "Not everyone goes for the brooding type, you know." Bless her Disney princess heart, Stiles thinks.

He is not going to turn around. Stiles knows the type, anyway, and he knows whoever this guy is had to be quite the hunk.

Everyone knows the type.

Finally extricating his phone from the remnants from the Reese's Peanut Butter Gluttony Cupcake, Stiles notices the time. Twenty minutes to get to the other side of campus. With that he starts to gather his scattered notes, coffee cups, and the rest of his effects.

At the same time he gives a groan at Allison's words, "Well, there you go. I definitely have no intentions of seeing whoever this dude is, because I've already met him." At this Lydia arches an eyebrow, assessing Stiles as to signify, 'Do you now?' "In fact, you do, too. We all do. The guy Hollywood and books, and media has sold as the alluring guy. The brooding, mysterious guy with a tragic backstory. The one that makes the heroine want to fix him and bring him back to life. The unattainable making him all that more irresistible. But, guess what?

"At the end of the day he's probably some asshole who makes up excuses for his asshole-ish ways, who thinks he can sleep with anyone and everyone because he never promised anything. He's the guy who breaks hearts without a backward glance. Standoffish, emotionally constipated, and probably growls his threats out. No, thank you." He ended his tirade with the slam of his hefty literature book, the punctuation to the sentence, and the discussion, but the action is so forceful that the book threatens to teeter over the edge of the table. Stiles fumbles to get it back on the table, only to have it drop once, and then twice before he steadies the book, the girl's coffee cups, and table back to even ground. He straightens his flannel, with exaggerated movements, but dammit he had the perfect speech going.

It's like stuttering when you have the perfect snappy comeback. He could've won some type of motivational speaker and okay so not a good idea for anyone involved.

With that he stuffs the rest of his belongings in his backpack and stands up.

"You're certainly ardent about it," Lydia says, airily. He's left slightly unhinged and he needs to get out of there pronto, not only because he has a class to get to, but because his chest is heaving in rapid beats.

The uneasy feeling that is threatening to overtake him isn't owing to the rant, it's to how quickly his temper had surged, the velocity at which the volley of his words has escaped him.

He needs out.

Stiles and the girls might be used to his spasmodic personality, but this is something wholly different, one that's starting to worry him. Something like fire is licking up his spine, overwhelming his senses, spiking up his heartbeat. Blood rushes around his head, as though the slightest pulse of annoyance takes a life of its own, making his body abuzz with it. With what, Stiles doesn't want to acknowledge yet.

Forehead creasing in a reaction of his startling antipathy, he blows out a miff breath, and chances a look at the girls. They are in a similar state, void of the heated burn in Stiles' cheek, although their furrowed brows convey quite the opposite of what is coursing through him at the moment. Lydia's and Allison's eyes asking him a question he couldn't voice an answer to.

In them he sees concern and stark perplexity.

"I have to go." He says, not giving them an opportunity to express their worry. Somewhat to verify that his display of furor is in part to his vagary disposition of vocalizing his opinions on matters, not a continuation to the preceding incidents that has been transpiring that summer.

Pushing the door on his way out, he exits the cafe, and sets out in a brisk pace that turns into a run, controlled by an unseeable force. At least his subconscious is steering him towards his class. Stiles had promised himself, and more importantly, his dad, that he wasn't going to make skipping class while in college 'a thing'—wording supplied by his dad.

Even though, that had been almost two years ago, he still tries to abide by his promise. More if it was made to his dad. There had been plentiful of tardy and absent slips in high school, mostly in Mr. Harris class. The Sheriff knew that while Stiles was in college he wasn't going to be there to supervise his comings and goings. Neither was he going to get a call inquiring about Stiles' health, when that morning he had passed his son as he was leaving to school.

And so, he had requested, giving his patented 'Stiles, don't try to get clever with me, son' look, that he try and make an effort to attend class, and only miss when something of an emergency was happening.

"Which doesn't extend to hangovers, Stiles." He had said, employing 'the look' for the fifth time that morning.

Grumbling out what passed as an assent, he had crossed his fingers behind his back, because no one could say with a straight face that Stiles was a mature adult.

 _Fine, he wasn't going to get an attendance award any time soon, not as if that was even a thing in college._ But he could pass a lie detector in asserting that he didn't have more than two absences in each class. Which, he wanted noted was because come three, in most, the professor would drop you. Unfair if you asked Stiles, because come on, life happened.

By the time his footfall has returned to his habitual stride, his heartbeat has abated some, the itching he felt moments prior receding into the shadows.

LACROSSE practice was whopping Stiles' ass, there was no other way around it. The possibility of starting that semester seemed simply that–possible, within grasp.

With it came everything else. Attention, for one, and that lead to the stands and the hooting of his name, which would then prompt a particular strawberry-blonde goddess to chant his name. If she even knew it, but that gave him more incentive to catch Finstock's eye and get his name on the starting lineup.

One thing was to have ambition, but to execute it in real life, well, something was being lost in translation. His self-esteem, apparently, along with it, since he'd been eating grass for hours.

"Game night, as a surcease from today's annihilation on the field?" Scott asked with a smirk, that looked more like a beaming, twist of his mouth. He stood at the side of Stile's jeep, lacrosse stick slashing the air in a parrot of the day's practice. "See, I'm getting better at those SAT words, and integrating them in conversation. Oh! and another one. I am on a role, dude."

"Yeah, you're a real semantician, buddy." He quipped, flicking his index finger at Scott, earning himself an eye-roll. They had known each other for years, and both knew not to take offense. Though, it was more of Scott not taking anything to heart from Stiles as he was presumably liable to spouting sarcastic remarks, that passed through no filter whatsoever. "Let me go home and shower, regroup, the whole shebang."

"Is your dad home?"

"Nope, night shift."

The "again" going unspoken, but heard nonetheless. It had been about every night that week, not that he had any right to complain. There were bills to pay, futures to think of, and it was the Sheriff's job to be available when needed.

Therefore, practically thinking, there should be no reason for Stiles to go home, it wasn't like he hadn't headed over to Scott right after a practice, or even after a game that his dad might have attended, but for some inexplicable reason he felt compelled to get home and...he didn't know what for. Except he had waved Scott off and got in his car driving the familiar route towards his house.

As soon as his house was visible, things slotted together, that disconcerting nagging he had at the beginning of the drive now a distant memory. Feeling as though it was any other day getting home after school. Locking his jeep, he jogged up to the front door, quickly making work of the lock.

Inside, the first floor was illuminated, as was custom. If he didn't get in before the sun was out then he knew that the house would be lit up by virtually every lamp, his mom liked it that way. She always said it was more welcoming, and like that they would know that she was there at the end of the day, no matter what. It was like clockwork for her, starting from the ground, up.

Except when he got to the stair landing and was meet with pitch darkness, the smile he had been sporting faded. Straining, he tried to hear for movement on the floor above, but he perceived not even the sound of the radio. Uneasiness making him hesitate on whether to make his way up. Slowly, and stiffly he ascended the stairs.

Stiles always complained at the inaccuracy of portrayals in horror films, how the character who heard a creak in the second floor made their way snaillike-slow. It was absurd, you heard something and you'd casually go check it out, it wasn't like at every moment a person was expecting a ghost, and if it was an intruder and the person was headed towards them then what would the sluggish pace do? He'd make the perfect victim for a horror movie, though. He can definitely imagine it, were there more people he'd probably be the second to to last do die. Scott would make it out alive, though. Stiles would go down screaming and fighting, if nothing else. Scott would avenge his death in the sequel.

What he was feeling right then was different, like he had already experienced it, should sense what was about to happen. Moments earlier he was ready to bound the stairs, shouting for his mother like usual. Abruptly, thoughts muddled in his head. What had the light been like outside? Afternoon, he answered himself. No, he retracted, night. He had seen the jeep outside when he'd let himself inside, making his mom presence known. Then, shouldn't the upstair be lighted up, too?

He hadn't been aware that he had gone into a standstill at the last step before the tread, subconsciously making it the last defense against what he guaranteed was inescapable. There was disoriented feeling to it all, things weren't adding up. He, himself for one wasn't thinking or acting as he would have. Time, a molasses stretch of seconds that prolonged into minutes.

Involuntarily, he took the last step, metaphorically and literally, as with before he did it with falter to his steps, until he stood in front of his parents door. He couldn't stop flexing his hands, and he felt himself scrunching up his face. With incertitude or foreboding, he couldn't be sure. Nothing felt like his volition. Realizing that that feeling had been there since the moment he had awoken that day—a day he couldn't recall at that point.

Looking at his hand rising to turn the knob didn't come as a shock anymore, things were taking a play-like feel. The whole day, in fact. His body resigning to the knowledge that he had to see it, no matter how obstinately he was opposing to it in his mind.

A creak emitted from the door, it seemed odd to Stiles, seeing as how the Sheriff had recently oiled it that weekend at his mother's request. Why was the house so dark, he kept thinking, the hammering in his chest seeming to be the soundtrack to this scene.

Stiles glanced around the room, nothing ostensibly out of place. He didn't know what he was supposed to be looking for, what he was doing there.

His eyes darted to the bathroom which was solidly closed. Because why wouldn't it? God, he just wanted things to move along, for time and his steps to speed up. Moving at a creeping pace was giving exactly that feeling—creepiness.

Contrastingly, that one went smoothly open, uncannily so. And had it been any other moment, and to anyone besides himself he would have busted out laughing, Scott right along with him. If he was honest with himself Scott would be laughing right now, too. Perhaps that was unfair of him to think it of Scott, because out of the two of them Stiles won the Asshole of Beacon County award, hands down. Scott was more tactful than that.

He had shoved it open an arm's length from the door, planking against the doorframe. But he didn't want to peek in, definitely not enter. Nonetheless, his feet dragged him forward.

Step. He pushed the door further open.

Step.

His body expelled him, confining him to this suffocating horror unfolding before his eyes.

No.

A litany of no no no no no chanted in his head as he subconsciously rushed towards the bathtub...

...where his mother's listless body laid, right arm dangled over the rim of the tub. His knees buckled, taking his body down to the floor. A resounding thud most have sounded at the collision, not that he heard nor felt it.

 _Tinnitus_ , that's the sound that people hear when a gun goes off and they were in close range. The same kind of buzzing that was now inside his head, produced by the same violent crime.

What he could feel was his mom's body plastered to his, he didn't recall having tugged her body out of the tub. Her body laid half in, the waist arched over the ledge.

Stiles cried out, but his voice didn't carry, sound robbed from him. He was rocking his mom's body, fingers stroking along her right hand fingers. Tender fingers that used to card through his overgrown hair. At the memories, the desire to buzz cut his hair again emerged. To feel the sharp prickle of his closely shorn hair.

The memories were too strong, too acute now.

Inconsolable, he dissolved into sobs, succumbing to the anguish. To the painful, cruel reality that left him stumped with overwhelming emotions. Crippling him right where he was, where he didn't want to move from. Yet he screamed his sorrows out to the stillness to no avail, because he knew this ache, this hollowness never went away. Only became a part of him.

Still, it was as if he himself could feel what his mother had gone through, a smarting pulsing in his gut, making him gasp, mutely. Mouth open in pain, sound never leaving his throat, he kneeled there. The pain continued, radiating in even the deepest crevices of his body, of his soul, and it hurt. Oh, did it hurt. So much that his body seized, making it unbearable to move even a muscle. His stomach contracting at the slightest movement.

Bringing his mom's fingers to his lips, he placed a whisper of a kiss, a sweet good bye. Meant only for her. For them.

Placing what was wrong with that image took him longer than he would have had he been in the right state of mind. As he prided himself in being quick on the uptake, he was seriously slacking. When it seemed he'd regained control over his body, he gently placed his mom's body on the tile floors, having nowhere else to do so. And the tub was out of the question.

With the intention of further investigation, he climbed to his feet, started walking towards to the door and stopped. Turning his head to face the mirror, he swallowed hard. Someone else was looking back at him, someone younger, innocent eyes searching over his face. No trace of puffed eyes, or tear tracks across his cheeks, or his usual red blotted face following a crying session. A hint of smirk was rising in the hoax face, mocking him and Stiles was powerless to do anything but gape in response.

He racked his brain for what this meant, he knew he'd read about it previously for precisely this moment. How did he know he'd need it? Especially for that instance?

Paralysis.

A fuzziness; unable to see clearly, often accompanied by an inability to completely control your thoughts and actions.

Check appearances.

Try to find a mirror. The reflection will often be blurry or distorted.

How to know if you're dreaming, the article had read.

A primal scream pierced the room, it was his own, but the freakish facsimile of himself in the mirror remained unmoving, a sinister smile now firmly in place. He continued screaming, loud and strong in hatred. That sickening sensation twisting, and churning his insides.

Encompassing madness—an effective destruction to his sanity, he knew first hand after all, didn't he?


End file.
